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African Water Crises*

U.N. hears of African water crisis

By MATT CRENSON, Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (June 6, 9:05 p.m. CDT) - Millions of poor African
families desperately need clean water, hiking miles to fetch it or buying
exorbitantly priced bottled water, even as wealthy Africans wash their cars
and water their lawns. Many slum dwellers steal water from pipelines.

What Africa needs to solve the problem is privatized water companies that
would make people pay for what they use, even if it means putting water meters
in every household, an expert panel said at the United Nations on Wednesday.

Most African cities provide running water to only a portion of their residents.
Other citizens, mostly those living in shantytowns on the outskirts of town,
make enormous sacrifices to get their daily drinking water supply. Or they
go without.

In Accra, Ghana, the water company delivers about half of the water the city
needs. Rich people use drinking water to water lawns and wash cars, said
Kwamena Bartels, Ghana's Minister for Public Works and Housing. Meanwhile,
slum dwellers buy expensive bottled water from people who illegally siphon
it out of the city's pipes. The practice is common throughout sub-Saharan
Africa.

"It is unbelievable but true that an inhabitant of Kibera slum in Nairobi,
earning less than a dollar a day, pays as much as five times the price paid
by an average U.S. citizen for a liter of water," said Anna Tibaijuka, director
of the U.N. Center for Human Settlements.

That wouldn't be the case if everybody had to pay a fair price for what they
used, water managers from several African nations told the U.N. Conference
on Human Settlements. The three-day conference opened Wednesday.

Accra has invited private investors to lease and operate the city's water
distribution system for profit, Bartels said. There are currently five contenders
for two contracts. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, will soon adopt a similar approach.

The hope is that a profit motive will drive those investors to make the water
distribution system more efficient and affordable.

Water currently costs 27 cents a cubic meter in Accra. Today, a private investor
would have to charge 63 cents to turn a profit. The World Bank has agreed
to pay the difference for the next five years, but by then the private company
is expected to have brought the cost down through increased efficiency

There is plenty of room for improvement. Half of Accra's water simply disappears
between the treatment plant and the customers, lost to leaks and theft. Only
10 percent of Dar es Salaam's customers even have water meters.

"There is a lot of stealing," said Victor Kanu, a senior education specialist
from Zambia. "A lot of pilfery. There is a lot of tampering with meters."

The inequitable distribution of water has unexpected and long-lasting effects
on African society, Tibaijuka said.

For example, girls who traditionally fetch water cannot attend school
during the hours they spend each day toting heavy containers. With no chance
to get an education, these girls will have little chance of escaping
poverty.

"If girls can be relieved of this burden, a lot of difference can be made

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